Just a final shout-out that you have four more days left in the AWS Serverless Apps for Social Good Hackathon to submit your skill.

Did you know you can build, publish, and submit multiple serverless applications to the AWS Serverless Apps for Social Good hackathon?

Each application should be unique and submitted according to submission guidelines—so remember to publish each application to the AWS Serverless Application Repository and make a demo video for each of your apps. As long as you submit each of your entries according to the guidelines, they will be individually considered for judging and prize…

Watch the recorded Twitch Broadcast from Serverless Developer Advocate Chris Munns and Alexa Solutions Architect Akersh Srivastava. Chris demonstrates how to leverage AWS Lambda and other serverless products starting at 8:40. You can see the app he created along with a bevy of Alexa backend apps in the AWS Serverless Application Repository starting at 47:21. To learn the ins and outs of creating an Alexa app from Akersh, jump to 54:50.

To publish your apps to the AWS Serverless Application Repository and submit them to the Serverless Apps for Social Good hackathon, you’ll need to package your apps using AWS SAM. TheServerless Application Repository only supports specific resource types and only allows the use of AWS SAM policy templates to extend AWS Lambda function permissions as described in the documentation.

You can request additional supported resources via AWS Support and new policy templates via the process described here. If you make your request by Friday, September 21, the team will work on it in an…

Build a serverless application for one of these categories: Alexa skills, IoT, Machine Learning, media processing, logging, monitoring, notifications, location and/or an application specifically designed to help combat human trafficking according to the problem statements and technical tools provided by our nonprofit partners

Rob Spectre, Founder of childsafe.ai and Serverless Application Repository judge, will be hanging out in our Slack channel (room #nonprofit) on Monday to provide more context on the issues that our nonprofit sponsors deal with every day.

Date: Monday, September 17

Time: 8 am – 9 am PST (11 am - 12pm EST)

Location: Serverless Apps for Social Good Slack channel #nonprofit

*If you cannot attend that time, post your questions in the #nonprofit room ahead of time and Rob will try to answer it during the session.

There are three weeks remaining in the AWS Serverless Apps for Social Good Hackathon. Submissions are due October 2, 2018 before 5pm ET.

Start your submission now

Starting a submission is a good way to make sure that your app meets the requirements. There’s nothing worse than getting to the deadline, only to realize that you’re missing a key component. Remember: once you submit a project, you can keep editing it as needed at any time prior to the submission deadline. Need a primer on how the submission form works? Head over to our submission form tutorial.

There’s one month remaining in the AWS Serverless Apps for Social Good Hackathon! Submissions are due October 2 before 5pm ET.

Start your submission now

Starting a submission is a good way to make sure that your component meets the requirements. There’s nothing worse than getting to the deadline, only to realize that you’re missing a key component. Remember: once you submit a project, you can keep editing it as needed at any time prior to the submission deadline. Need a primer on how the submission form works? Head over to our submission form tutorial.

We know as devs your expertise lies in building apps - so keep building! - however, the submission video needs time too! It's often the first thing that judges and voters review.

Your video tells the story behind your submission, providing a clear display of your project and talent in a video:

Establish your elevator pitch. In the first few seconds of your video, explain how your AWS application solves a painpoint or contributes to the work nonprofit organizations are doing to combat human trafficking. Within 60 seconds, viewers tend to lose interest, so use this time wisely to keep…

Want to enter two hackathons at once? You can! Need to learn more about how to build your solutions in real time? You can do that, too!

Build an Alexa skill to submit to the Amazon Alexa Skills Challenge: Tech for Good hackathon. Then, package it using AWS SAM to publish it to the AWS Serverless Application Repository and submit it to the AWS Serverless Apps for Social Good hackathon.

If you need help, we’re hosting alive Twitch broadcast on Friday, September 7, from 9:30 am – 11 am PST. Want to read more about the event and sign…

Polaris also recently released new findings focused on intersections between the public and private sectors and how industries across them can disrupt human trafficking. You can read the blog post, access the full report, or get an at-a-glance view from their systemic…

As our nonprofit partners report, human trafficking robs 25 million people a year of their freedom.

Human trafficking affects children, women, men, mothers, brothers, daughters, sons, and friends. While the advance of technology has given human traffickers more opportunities to commit offenses, it can also empower those who combat human trafficking to fight against it more effectively.

As Polaris states, “New data and insights open doors to possibilities - ways in which law enforcement, governments, service providers, and private businesses can undermine traffickers’ businesses, making them more risky and less profitable.”

Today, less than 1,500 of the more than 100,000 US technology companies are registered to report Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Read more about the issue here.

You can build serverless applications that help eliminate CSAM from the internet.

Questions?

If you have any questions about the hackathon, please post on the discussion forum.

The AWS Serverless team recently aired a webinar that offers step-by-step examples for building serverless apps using AWS SAM and publishing them to the AWS Serverless Application Repository.

You can watch the webinar or explore other helpful resources like recordings of live coding sessions on Twitch and in-depth developer guides on the AWS Serverless Application Repository Resources page.

Happy building!

Sincerely,

Devpost + AWS

Questions?

If you have any questions about the hackathon, please post on the discussion forum.